Environmentalists, political leaders and business groups in California and across the country slammed President Trump’s announcement Thursday that the U.S. will withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, aimed at boosting renewable energy and reducing heat-trapping pollution from fossil fuels.

“Donald Trump has absolutely chosen the wrong course,” said Gov. Jerry Brown, who was scheduled to travel to China on Friday to work on climate partnerships. “California will resist this misguided and insane course of action. Trump is AWOL, but California is on the field, ready for battle.”

Brown, who noted in a conference call with reporters that California’s economy grew faster than the U.S. economy last year while having the nation’s toughest environmental laws, announced Thursday that he and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee have formed the “United States Climate Alliance,” a coalition of states committed to upholding the Paris climate agreement’s targets.

The three states have 68 million residents, represent a fifth of the U.S. economy and emit 10 percent of U.S.-generated greenhouse gasses.

Billionaire Elon Musk, the founder of Palo Alto-based electric carmaker Tesla, announced that he will step down from Trump’s business advisory council and a presidential advisory panel on manufacturing jobs.

“Climate change is real,” Musk tweeted. “Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world.”

But Trump argued Thursday that the Paris pact will cost Americans jobs, particularly in industries such as coal mining, steel production and auto manufacturing. He said that the U.S. agreed to tougher targets than economic rivals such as China and India and noted that he is open to renegotiating the deal.

“I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris,” Trump said.

In many ways, the decision is symbolic. Trump was already working to scrap two of the main ways that former President Barack Obama had planned to reduce greenhouse gases to meet the U.S. targets: his regulations doubling the gas mileage standards for U.S. vehicles and the “Clean Power Plan,” a series of Obama EPA regulations aimed at reducing emissions from coal-fired power plants. The latter is tied up in lawsuits.

In addition, under the agreement the U.S. can’t formally leave until November 2020, the month of the next presidential election.

Advertisement

Republican leaders in Congress supported the decision.

Trump “made the right call in leaving a deal that would have put an unnecessary burden on the United States,” said House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield.

Obama signed the Paris agreement in 2015. Every country in the world but two — Syria and Nicaragua — also endorsed the agreement. It’s not a binding treaty, however, and was not submitted to the U.S. Senate for ratification.

Instead, it’s a commitment in which each of the 195 participating countries agreed to different voluntary targets for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. The U.S. — the world’s second-largest greenhouse gas polluter behind China — agreed to cut emissions by up to 28 percent from 2005 levels by 2025. So far, the U.S. has reduced emissions by 12 percent.

The goal of the Paris agreement is to limit the increase in global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, by the end of this century, as a way to reduce the impact of increased droughts, forest fires and rising sea levels.

Trump framed the agreement as an example of how other countries take advantage of the United States.

“We don’t want other leaders and other countries laughing at us anymore — and they won’t be,” he said.

Silicon Valley leaders, however, said that boosting renewable energy creates more jobs than are lost.

“When it comes to our economy, environment and global moral standing, this move by our president is a major stumble,” said Carl Guardino, CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, which represents major technology companies.

Guardino predicted that Trump’s move will not only hurt companies that fund and manufacture solar panels and wind turbines, but also firms that make everything from charging stations for electric cars to software to improve energy efficiency in buildings. “This undercuts those efforts,” he said.

PG&E’s vice president for federal affairs, Melissa Lavinson, said the company is “disappointed” and had urged Trump not to pull out of the agreement.

Jim Wunderman, CEO of the Bay Area Council, a group representing 275 of the largest Bay Area companies, said addressing climate change creates new markets for California firms to sell clean technology in China, expands construction jobs by expanding BART and other mass transit, boosts wetlands restoration around San Francisco Bay and creates markets for electric vehicles.

“California and the Bay Area remain on an irreversible course forward to lead the world into a sustainable clean-energy future,” Wunderman said. “Addressing climate change is not just an environmental or moral imperative, it is an economic imperative.”

Scientifically, there is no question that the Earth is warming. Overall, 2016 was the hottest year ever recorded in California since modern temperature records were first taken in the late 1800s. The previous record for statewide average temperature was 2015, and the previous record was 2014. In fact, the 10 hottest years globally back to the 1880s all have occurred since 1998, according to NASA.

Brown, who has made climate change a centerpiece of his governorship, signed a law last year requiring that 50 percent of the electricity generated in California by 2030 come from solar, wind and other renewable sources such as biomass and geothermal. In 2015, such renewable sources made up 23 percent — and that share is growing.

Trump has questioned the science of climate change, which is accepted by the overwhelming majority of the world’s scientific institutions, including the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the World Meteorological Organization, NASA, NOAA and the national scientific societies of nearly every major industrial country.

In 2012, Trump tweeted: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”

Last month, more than 20 Republican senators, led by Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyoming, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, and Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, said in a letter to Trump: “It is clear that those advocating for greenhouse gas regulations will use the Paris Agreement as a legal defense against your actions to rescind the Clean Power Plan if you decide to remain in the Paris Agreement. This is why it is so important for you to make a clean exit from the Agreement.”

Environmental groups said Trump’s decision is foolish.

“Generations from now, Americans will look back at Donald Trump’s decision to leave the Paris Agreement as one of the most ignorant and dangerous actions ever taken by any president,” said Michael Brune, national executive director of the Sierra Club, based in San Francisco.

Large employers such as Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Google, Nike, DuPont, Johnson & Johnson urged Trump to remain part of the Paris agreement. And several oil companies, including ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, also urged Trump this week not to drop out. Their argument: The U.S. should retain a seat at the table to help influence international climate rules because they sell their products in other countries and will be affected by the rules.